Firstly, my model had come with Firmware version 1.00.22. This seemed to be a great version of Firmware, and the Modem was very stable and I had no issues - until I tried to single port forward last week. No matter what I did, the ports did not actually forward. I pulled my PC's firewall to pieces, and still the forwarding didn't work (I was trying to set up a dedicated server for online racing game RFactor):
 |
| Single Port Forward page on the Linksys WAG54G V3 |
So after filling in all of the information and saving it, I went back and ran the RFactor dedicated server, only to find no one could connect to it over the internet. Great. After checking all the details several times, and then turning my firewall off (and disabling a number of other things) on my PC, it was still no better. Eventually, I decided to use the Port Forward Range screen to enter what is the identical information:
Once I did this, everything worked straight away, even after re-enabling everything (firewalls etc) on my PC. Thanks Linksys.
So, after that debacle, I thought this would be a good opportunity to upgrade the firmware on my WAG54G, to hopefully prevent this happening again. I jumped onto the Linksys/Cisco website and found that an updated version (1.00.65) was out, and so downloaded this one and upgraded my modem.
Except for the fact that as soon as the Firmware upgrade started the modem dropped connection rather than use the progress bar that was actually on the page, the Firmware upgrade seemed to go well, and all my 'home screen' settings were still there.
A couple of days later, I noticed that my WiFi for my Android smartphone was not connected when I was only a few metres away from my Modem. I hadn't really taken any notice since the firmware upgrade, but it seems that the WiFi network was no longer there.
After looking in the settings, the WiFi had indeed not copied into the new firmware version. Taking this as only a minor hitch, I set it up again with the same settings. To my surprise, my smartphone would still not even find the WiFi network. I then tried another smartphone, and that was the same.
Puzzled at what was wrong, I began testing different WiFi channels and different configuration settings, but nothing made any difference. The only other WiFi device in my house was my PS3, so I went gave that a go. Surprisingly, that could see the network no problems at all!
By this point I was having a pretty big WTF moment. I did some reading online, and the small amount I did find, didn't really help. Someone mentioned setting the modem up again from a factory reset, which with all my custom settings I wasn't very keen on doing. I also couldn't roll back the firmware as I couldn't find a file online for that version...
Biting the bullet, I did a factory reset on the modem. As soon as it came back up, my phone could see the WiFi network! All the settings were defaults from the factory reset, but it did work. I thought I might try restoring the backup of my config I took before the firmware upgrade, but as soon as it loaded back in, the WiFi was dead again on the two smartphones.
So, after another factory reset and putting all my custom settings back into the modem, I was up and going again. Looks like it was another 'fail moment' from Linksys/Cisco there...
Hopefully this will help someone who is having similar issues!
Nice post :)
ReplyDeleteYou saved my bacon!
ReplyDeleteYour fix worked perfectly and got me back up and running again.
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!
and I was just about to upgrade my firmware to see if this would improve the performance of our router.... hmmm better left as is I think.
ReplyDeletethank you for sharing your experience.